Animation Engineer (Senior / Staff / Principal) Job at Gym Class in Los Angeles

Role Summary Gym Class is the top rated social sports game on Meta Quest - millions of downloads, 79,000+ reviews, and a 4.9-star rating. As we scale our flagship VR experience and expand to new platforms like mobile, we’re hiring a talented, driven Animation Engineer to lead the future of character motion, responsiveness, and expressiveness across our ecosystem. You’ll own our Unity animation systems end-to-end, shipping high-impact improvements to real-time player avatars and AI-driven characters, while collaborating closely with gameplay, AI, animation, art, design, and our co-founders. WHAT YOU'LL DO Design, build, and ship real-time animation systems for VR and mobile avatars and AI characters in Unity. Architect core animation logic (state machines, blend trees) with clean integration of IK and procedural layers. Deliver believable movement via seamless transitions between clips, IK, physics/locomotion, and interaction cues. Optimize for performance at scale: utilize a variety of methods to hit frame-rate targets on a wide device range. Own the animation roadmap, making pragmatic quality-vs-velocity tradeoffs aligned to company goals and upcoming modes/features. Partner across disciplines (gameplay, AI, tech art) to land features end-to-end and ensure animation systems play nicely with game mechanics. QUALIFICATIONS 5+ years building and shipping games with Unity + C# . Proven delivery of runtime animation systems (Animator Graphs, state machines, blending/layering, events, root motion). Hands-on IK setup and runtime integration (e.g., Unity Animation Rigging, FinalIK, or custom). Mobile/VR performance expertise: profiling (Profiler, Frame Debugger, GPU tools), data management, memory/CPU/GPU tradeoffs. Strong debugging, problem-solving, and product sense; you sweat details and ship. Shipped title(s) reaching a meaningful audience (mobile or social preferred). BONUS POINTS Performance-oriented patterns and multiplayer-friendly animation sync. AI-assisted/procedural animation (motion matching, pose estimation, predictive blending). Physics-informed animation (ragdoll stabilization, locomotion controllers). Passion for social gaming and pushing expression in VR + mobile. Pay and Benefits Salary ranges may be inclusive of several career levels and will be narrowed during the interview process based on a number of factors, including the candidate’s experience, qualifications, and location. Additional benefits for this role include: equity; and medical, dental, and vision benefits; and 401k retirement plan with matching. #J-18808-Ljbffr